What happened to Zirtual and how we are different.

Earlier this week, news broke that Virtual Assistant startup Zirtual was shutting down; canceling all of its current operations and firing almost 400 employees overnight. Zirtual had once been a shining star in the Virtual Assistant space and grew quickly in a span of 5 years. In that period, Zirtual grew from a concept to a company with offices in Las Vegas and the Bay Area, with employees numbering in the hundreds. In the end, Zirtual imploded from within due to the exorbitant amounts of money they had spent while transitioning their workers from independent contractor status to full time employees. Originally, Zirtual had classified their Virtual Assistants as independent contractors, which allowed them to pay close to 20% to 30% less than what they would have had to pay if they classified their workers as employees. On top of this unsustainable transition, Zirtual had acquired many clients by establishing an aggressive client acquisition initiative where they offered unlimited tasks for only $99 a month! While the strategy worked in getting dozens of clients quickly, it also meant that the company was spending money like crazy! Their unsustainable client acquisition strategy combined with the added cost of transitioning their employees from contractor status to full time employment caught them unawares and as a result, they “burned” through all the money they had in profit and all the money they had raised from investors.

Thankfully, iVirtual Business Services will not confront the same issues Zirtual experienced in the last month. While we somewhat operate in the same space, iVirtual Business Services offers more services than what a typical Virtual Assistant would be able to provide. The foundation of our business is our focus on slow, steady, and measured growth. Our goal is to provide exceptional service and support to our clients and we will never make promises and set expectations that we can not follow through on. Every one of our team members is vetted carefully to ensure that their character and quality of work meets or exceeds our expectations. And our clients realize that when they see the quality of our work.

To conclude, iVirtual Business Services is all about producing value for our clients and being properly compensated for that value. You will never see us offering unlimited tasks per month for x amount of dollars because we believe that the model is unsustainable and that it sets unreasonable standards to our clients about our service and its value. After all, do you prefer to eat at a buffet or a restaurant? Whatever your preference, iVBS creates unique proposals to solve your dynamic issues.

If you’d like to schedule a consultation to discuss the value of using iVBS, please don’t hesitate to schedule a meeting with me. Virtual Assistant services is just one facet of our iVBS suite of solutions and I would love to go into further detail about where and how we can produce value to your bottom line.

iVirtual Business Services is your Operational & Administrative Solution…because you deserve work/life balance.